For more information about any of these texts, contact Derek Christian Quezada Meneses, USC Libraries Rare Book Librarian.
Le Throsne du destin, auquel chacun peut voir sa bonne ou mauvaise fortune en jettant un, ou deux, ou trois dez communs, sur quelz points quilz se puissent recontrer.
Maître C. Coturier, Paris 1632
USC Special Collections GV1303.C68 1632
Le Throsne du destin is a seventeenth-century game book on vellum. Players cast dice to learn which of the game’s one hundred and sixty-four bawdy and scandalous fortunes – divided in half by sex (women’s fortunes on the recto side, men’s on the verso) – would be their fate. USC’s newly acquired copy of this remarkably unique manuscript includes the original bone dice necessary to play the game.
De spectris, lemuribus et magnis, atque insulitis fragoribus, variisque praesagitionibus, quae plerunque obitum hominum, magnas clades, mutationesque imperiorum praecedunt, liber unus. In tres partes distributes. Omnibus veritatis studiosis summe utilis.
Ludg. Batav. Apud Jordanum Luchtmans, Bibliopolae, 1687
USC Special Collections BF1445.L38 1687
De spectris was one of the most frequently printed and translated Protestant texts dealing with the supernatural in the early modern era. The Zwinglian theologian Ludwig Lavater (1527-1586) wrote De spectris to provide rational and theological explanations for the era’s superstitions. Lavater dismissed ghostly apparitions as misunderstood natural or psychological phenomena or as deceptions of the devil in line with Reformation theology. USC’s copy of De spectris belongs to the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library.
Josephi Judei Historici pre clara opera non[n] parua accuratio[n]e & diligentia rece[n]ter
Flavius Josephus, edited and translated by Robert Goulet
Paris: Jean Petit, 1519
USC Special Collections PA4222.A3 1519
Josephi Judei Historici is a Latin edition of Flavius Josephus’s Antiquitates Judicae printed in Paris in 1519. Born in Jerusalem, Josephus (c. 37-100 CE) was a priest, scholar, and army commander. This text provides a Jewish history from Creation to the Great Revolt of 66-70 CE. Josephus was among the most popular ancient historians for early modern humanists in part because his writing provides a historical context for early Christianity. This edition of Josephus’s Antiquitates Judicae was produced for humanist scholars in and around the University of Paris; Robert Goulet, a priest and professor, translated the text, and the prominent Parisian bookseller Jean Petit published it. This may explain the inclusion of the contested “Testimonium Flavianum”—a passage in which Josephus refers to Jesus as the Messiah—which is assumed to be a later forgery.
For more information, contact Taylor Dwyer, Curator of Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, USC Special Collections.
